1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to educational devices, and more particularly pertains to an improved educational device for providing an entertaining and stimulating forum for testing an individual's knowledge of a particular subject utilizing a plurality of question and answer cards. Many individuals, and especially younger children have a limited attention span and are frequently distracted by other thoughts in a classroom environment when faced with conventional educational techniques. In order to provide a more stimulating educational environment, the present invention provides a visual blocking stand and a plurality of question and answer cards, in conjunction with a selectively illuminated human eye representation to provide a positive visual reinforcement of a correctly answered question.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various types of educational devices are known in the prior art. A typical example of such an educational device is to be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,451,911, which issued to G. Klose et al on May 29, 1984. This patent discloses an electronic toy doll including electronic control circuitry responsive to selection of one of a plurality of switches on the doll housing for providing associated stored vocal messages. U.S. Pat. No. 4,464,124, which issued to H. Romero et al on Aug. 7, 1984, discloses an electrical educational device including a magnetic tape player for reproducing information from adjacent channels on a magnetic tape. In a first portion, a given question and a plurality of possible answers are recorded on both channels and in a second portion, a quoted indication of the correct answer is recorded. U.S. Pat. No. 4,474,557, which issued to M. Clossey on Oct. 2, 1984, discloses an electronic world map game adapted for use as a teaching aid for instructing school pupils in the recognition of land masses of the world map. U.S. Pat. No. 4,505,682, which issued to B. Thompson on Mar. 19, 1985, discloses an electronic learning aid with a match and compare mode of operation. An electronic speech synthesizer is operatively associated with a bar code reader which selects speech words or phrases to be produced by the speech synthesizer. The device is utilized by an operator to select an object of comparison such as a display picture, with a number or other indicia to identify one of a plurality of answer choices. U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,357, which issued to T. Ito on June 16, 1987, discloses a teaching machine which includes a card to pose a question to a user of the machine and to accommodate both a first case wherein a voice signal is audibly reproduced before the user enters his answer to the question into the machine and a second case wherein a voice signal is audibly reproduced after the user enters his answer into the machine.
While the above mentioned devices are directed to educational devices, none of these devices disclose a generally L-shaped visual blocking stand having a vertical portion provided with a representation of a human eye which is selectively illuminatable by two different colored electrical lamps to indicate a correct or a wrong answer. Inasmuch as the art is relatively crowded with respect to these various types of educational devices, it can be appreciated that there is a continuing need for and interest in improvements to such educational devices, and in this respect, the present invention addresses this need and interest.